Case Number 04790

BEAST WARS: TRANSFORMERS: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON

The Charge

"Die-cast technology...it's a lost art."

Opening Statement

Transformers: Beast Wars could be the best animated series ever
developed exclusively to market a line of toys...a moot accomplishment if ever
there was one. But don't let that little fact deter you. Because within this
marketing subgenre wasteland almost guaranteed to be crappy beyond human
comprehension, emerges a show that had gripping storylines, groundbreaking
animation, and just the right amount of nostalgic flair. Who would've thunk
it?

Facts of the Case

Three hundred years have passed since the original Secret War in 1984 between
the Autobots and the Decepticons on planet Earth. Cybertron, the home planet of
the Transformers, has flourished in those years and evolved; the two new
dominant species are the Maximals, who rule with fairness and justice, and the
Predacons, who are enslaved and subjugated for their ancestral treachery. A
renegade Predacon terrorist, taking up the name of legendary Deception warrior
Megatron, steals a priceless Cybertron relic called the Golden Disk, and flees
into space with a band of villains. The Golden Disk is rumored to contain the
location of a massive Energon source, which Transformers use for fuel. With this
surplus, he plans on launching an all-out assault on the Maximals, and restoring
Cybertron to the ruling hand of the Predacons.

Unfortunately for Megatron, a Maximal exploration ship discovers the
escaping anarchists and launches an assault. Hurled through transwarp space,
both ships crash-land on a mysterious, primeval planet. The two groups begin
conflict with one another, each hoping to destroy the other, and to figure out a
way to escape the planet, which, coincidentally, is loaded to the brim with
Energon. Thus, the Beast Wars begin...

In this, the second season, things start to heat up for the Transformers. An
alien race begins to assault the very planet in an attempt to purge the invaders
from its surface. Both the Maximals and the Predacons must deal with the growing
alien threat, as well as one another. But most dangerous of all, Megatron has
discovered the secret behind the Golden Disks...a secret that has the potential
to not only destroy the Maximals for good, but also to rewrite the past, erase
the timeline, and change the future forever!

The Evidence

Since the original Transformers went off the air, the franchise has
been somewhat stagnant in North America. Toy sales have always been steady
enough to justify their continual production, despite having no television show
to accompany it. Transformers: Beast Wars, based on a Hasbro toy line,
was to be the new show developed in order to promote this modern-day toy line
for a new generation. Like the original Transformers series, the show was
created by Hasbro, but this time in conjunction with Mainframe Entertainment,
the Canadian animation studio that created the groundbreaking series
ReBoot. This time, Transformers would be 100% North
American-based, unlike the original series, which was written in North America
but animated in Japan.

This was to be a challenging endeavor if ever there was one. Would they be
able to make a show that would satisfy the pop-culture junkies, the die-hard
fans of the show, the pimply-faced teenagers who grew up on a steady diet of
Transformers every Saturday morning, without simply remaking the old
cartoon itself? This was to be a Transformers for young and old alike,
but right off the bat, it had a lot to live up to. No surprise then that the
show tried to be as original and unique as possible. For one thing, the show was
entirely computer generated, and in 1996, this was something that made it stand
out. It gave the show an amazingly fresh and unique look. Secondly, it was
decided that, at first, this new Transformers would have little to do
with the original show; rather, it would take place hundreds of years in the
future, removed from the original storyline. Rather than simply remaking the old
Transformers series of yesteryear (like the present-day
Transformers cartoons are doing...grumble grumble), the creators of
Beast Wars managed to construct a show that had little to do directly
with the original series, and yet found clever thematic and conceptual ways to
constantly reference it.

The plot premise was as simplistic as it was brilliant: strand a team of bad
guys on a deserted planet, along with an equal team of good guys. Suddenly, you
have the justification for a never-ending stream of battles, confrontations,
shifty alliances, and skirmishes to last for seasons, with nothing to get in the
way. Any time a new cast member was added, it dramatically shifted the balance
of power and conflict on the show, until reinforcements arrived to fill in the
ranks, which gave constant opportunity to expand and modify the cast. This set
up premise after premise for unending conflict and tension, with the freedom to
develop any long-term plot devices they saw fit. And in the second season of
Beast Wars, they came up with some doozies.

Suffice it to say, the original Transformers play a key role in the
storyline, as the two radically different story arcs converge for a brief
period, which only heightens the nostalgic pleasure. The finale of the second
season ends on the mother of all cliffhangers in a spectacular climax
representing some of the finer storyline arcs I have ever witnessed in a
children's cartoon. I found myself dejectedly turning over the DVD packaging,
hoping in vain that a new, unexplored disc would magically pop out, continuing
the third series for my enjoyment...but sadly, it was not to be.

Transformers: Beast Wars: The Complete Second Season contains all
thirteen uncut episodes from (you guessed it) the second season of the show.
Considering the show was created exclusively to market a new line of Hasbro
toys, the show is surprisingly good. Shocking good, even. And yet, the show
never seemed to garner the respect it deserved, dismissed casually by young and
old alike. Beast Wars had a fantastic premise, and without daring to
spoil the intricate nuances of the plotline, found a clever and stylish way of
cross-referencing the original Transformers series without ever feeling
derivative. But as cool as nostalgia points are, rest assured that Beast
Wars could stand on its own, as its own show, on the merits of its
animation, its character design and development, and its plot. The nostalgic
tie-ins are simply gravy.

The fact that new computer generated cartoons could be pumped out every week
was a marvel of production values and animation technology. Of course, compared
to the marvels of Pixar, the animation of Beast Wars seems crude, and
definitely lacking the subtlety one has come to expect of computer animation;
but in 1996, this was cool stuff, especially when it aired every week on TV. At
times, the background landscapes and environments could have used the same
loving care extolled upon the characters themselves, and occasionally, things
would get peculiar and blocky looking, but it is no worse than the occasional
jerky animation frame in a hand-drawn cartoon. Ultimately, it is a moot point,
for Beast Wars is, above all else, a character-driven show.

Character designs and animations are vibrant and expertly crafted,
impressively emotional features with excellent facial response, and each with
individual personality being easily identifiable as singularly unique, with
amazingly top-notch voice acting. This could be the most important element that
makes Beast Wars a superior animation series, for it cannot be
understated how important good voice acting can be for an animated cartoon --
especially in a CGI cartoon, where all elements of humanity feel distant and
removed. The acting is superb, with a great cast of unique voices and expressive
personalities that transfer human personalities incredibly well into cold
robotic shells. The characters beg to be loved and adored. Beast Wars has
downright enjoyable characters, full of emotion, pathos, and internal conflict;
surprisingly well fleshed-out for a weekly cartoon based on toys. I keep
mentioning this fact because I find myself so surprised by it on a profound
level.

The second thing that Beast Wars did exceptionally well was balancing
dark, brooding, dramatic story arcs within the lighthearted spirit of the show.
At its core, of course, Beast Wars is a children's show, but as the
series progressed, the creators would constantly push towards more mature
themes, storylines, and issues within the candy-coated shell of enjoyable,
easygoing cartoon fare. Death, destruction, personal sacrifice, guilt, malice,
and corruption feel completely at home with explosions, slapstick comedy, bad
puns, and other standard cartoon devices in such a skillful and subtle way that
one hardly notices the juxtaposition of adult themes into the cartoon.

The image quality on this DVD is, well, complicated. The picture looks
sharp, crisp, clean and detailed...at first. I loved the way the light reflected
off the Transformers, the luscious colors, the overall clarity of the image;
that is, until I caught weird things out of the corner of my eye. Strange little
motion blurs. Was I seeing a peculiar softness to the image during certain
sequences? Was that just a pixelated block I saw? So, I went in for a closer
look. Horrifyingly, zooming the image in reveals a jumbled, pixelated,
edge-enhanced Lego-block mess, much worse than one would normally expect from a
DVD image, especially a computer-generated DVD image! The horror!

What makes this especially problematic, from a reviewer's stance, is that
these technical gaffes are hardly noticeable to the naked eye when simply
playing the DVD. If one were casually watching, in fact, one would say the image
looks pretty good -- I certainly thought so, until I had watched a good ten
episodes. You could easily miss the flaws. Only when taking a more critical eye
to the picture does one see the lack of fidelity in the image transfer, the
strangely ambiguous softness at times, and the motion blurs -- all the tiny
technical faults that slowly add up. To be honest, I find myself torn between
what I can see with my eyes and what I know, from a technical standpoint, is a
lack of image fidelity. Perhaps those with higher end televisions and
progressive scan players would instantly quibble about the image quality, but to
be honest, they might not. Beast Wars may not look perfect, but by no
means should it be considered an outright failure in the image department. It
looks good, yes, but there is definitely room for improvement.

In typical Rhino fashion, each episode comes in a Dolby Surround 5.1 mix, as
well as a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix. Each has its individual merits and drawbacks.
The Surround mix makes much better use of ambient space and bass, mixing the
sounds across the audio spectrum quite efficiently, but suffers a peculiar
softness in volume level on the dialogue. Conversely, the stereo mix sounds
brighter, less bass-rich, almost rough-sounding, but with a much more
aggressive, easy-to-understand dialogue track. Frankly, it is nice to have both,
so whichever one strikes your ear as the most pleasant, go with it. Both are
excellent mixes with small, subtle differences. In terms of supplementary
content, a few scattered pieces of animation test footage are lumped on this
DVD, hardly worth exploring. Gone are the crew interviews present on the first
season DVD release, which is a shame. If this DVD has a flaw, its lack of
supplementary content would definitely be it.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

First of all, and perhaps most importantly: a gorilla on a flying snowboard?
That's a character design?

Sky-surfing metal gorillas aside -- while the cartoon does the best
conceivable job possible of making the best out of a bad situation (let we
forget, these were conceived as 22-minute commercials for toys), the show
occasionally falls out of its symbiotic balance. As mentioned before, Beast
Wars does a fantastic job of balancing itself between its dual nature; being
both a new show for young kids, full of wit and charm, and being a nostalgic
show for teenagers / immature adults with dark angst-filled storylines and
constant references to the 1980s. However, when things do fall out of balance,
they tend to fall in favor towards the kid side of things. This is
understandable, to a point. Admittedly, I quantify into the teenager / immature
adult category, so my opinion is not without a small measure of bias, but in
falling toward the immature side, the show feels weaker and less impressive, to
me. The darker, complex storylines are downright impressive in their depth and
(relative) complexity, all things considering, but the more lighthearted
episodes feel thin, detracting slightly from the overall success of the
show.

The only other glaring problem with Beast Wars, as a whole, is the
music. Irritatingly, every episode has the exact same score, and each character
basically has the same bit of entrance music, so after ten episodes or so, your
brain has simply had enough of the music. It gets on your nerves the way tiny
little elves with pick-axes get on your nerves, by climbing into your ears at
night and chopping away at your central nervous system. I swear this
happens.

Closing Statement

Transformers: Beast Wars was a fantastically underappreciated
television show, quickly dismissed by many as being a mere computer-animated
gimmick trying to rake in the nostalgic success of a vintage franchise. Now on
DVD, the series can achieve the proper recognition it deserves. Everything that
the original Transformers series did wrong, Beast Wars does right:
great voice acting, solid storylines, engaging character development, and more
transforming robot explosions and battle sequences crammed into every episode
than you could shake an Energon cube at.

For all the casually curious, Beast Wars could be the answer to the
unfilled animation hole deep in your heart. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll
get to see gigantic robots duke it out in every episode. For nostalgic
Transformers fans, the second season offers the best tie-ins and
crossovers to the original show featured throughout the entire series, and
represents a show absolutely superior to the original series in every
conceivable way.

So either way, it's win-win. And those are the best kind of DVDs to get
behind.

The Verdict

Rhino gets a pat on the back for its release of Transformers: Beast
Wars on DVD. But hopefully, Rhino will have the foresight to pass on
releasing the follow-up series, Transformers: Beast Machines, which was
universally regarded as a piece of transforming garbage.